it goes at once into those of the nearest police magistrate.

Hawk. (After a pause, gloomily.) What are your

terms?

Mild. The price of those shares at par, and Mrs. Sternhold's letters.

Hawk. Here's the money.

Mild. You'll excuse my counting. It is a mercantile habit I learned in the house of Dalrymple Brothers. Quite correct. Here are the scrip 11 tificates. And now, if you please, the letters.

Hawk. Here they are.

cer

Mild. You'll excuse my counting them too. Thirteen, exactly! Here is the forged bill. And now, Captain Burgess, I mean Hawksley, I have the honor to wish you a very good morning.

1 ĮN-TĚN'TION. Purpose.

-

2 IN-DÖRSEMENT. The act of writing his name by the payee, or holder of a bill, note, or check, on or across it, by which the property in it is assigned or transferred.

8 MO'TIVE. Cause; reason.

4 THE O-RY. Plan, scheme, or system existing only in the mind.

5 SPEC-U-LA'TION. The act of invest

ing money, or of incurring extensive risks, with a view to more than usual Success in trade.

1

6 DIS-COUNT'ING. Lending or advancing money upon, with deduction of discount.

7 PAPER. Bills of exchange, promissory notes, &c.

8 AD-VĪ'CES. Intelligence; information. 9 CAL'UM-NY. A false accusation maliciously made; slander.

10 BACK. Support.

11 SCRIP. A small piece of paper containing a writing.

LXI. - SAN FRANCISCO.

JAMES F. WATKINS.

1. DAYBREAK, after a chilly night. A faint band of light-too cold and gray to be called a flushhas appeared in the east, and shows beneath it, in sharp outline, the black profile of a line of hills. In the zenith the stars yet twinkle frostily. A thin mist hangs like a ghostly pall over a lifeless earth. Through it looms a vast black shadow, towering like a spectral mountain into the night. The earth is moist and slippery, and eaves drip. There is no stir in the air, or this raw damp would nip shrewdly.

2. On every hand, and for many a mile, stretches away the faint, floating veil of mist. It is not a fog; it is too thin and light rather as the ghost of a fog, or as a dew made visible. Through it are also seen the blinking lights of a sleeping city. A muffled rumbling of wheels comes up now and again on the still, wet air; the early market-wagons are rolling in from along the foot of that blacker patch of night which stretches away in uncertain outline, as of another crest of hills.

3. From far out into the night two flaming red eyes turn upon the land a drunken and blood-shot glare, even while they dart seaward the kind, strong beams which warn anxious sailors off the lurking 2 death. The fierce eyes show where iron-hearted rocks have hid themselves beneath confederate waves, and lie stealthily in wait to give the sailor a landsman's wel come only too like that which lies in wait for him on shore.

4. The light in the east now flushes, and grows warm, and drives back the night-battling more feebly for the field, breaking and giving way through out the long, wavering skirmish-line. The lights in the human hive are pale and sick; the two great, red eyes begin to lack lustre and grow old. The distent roll of wheels is become a steadier roar, and with it mingles a sharper rattle as the lighter wagons join in the early round. But the city still slumbers heavily. And again the glow in the east has deepened. The gray, misty pall, which had seemed so dank and chill, lights up in the glow of heaven, and floats a fairy bridal veil- lending a tenderness to charms it cannot conceal.

5. Now, the eye may range over the fair picture, which lies unrolled, stretching wide and far on every hand. A broad expanse of water reaches away for many a mile, until closed in by an intruding headland - far beyond which, again, dim and faint in the blue distance, sweep the hills which bound the water's farther shore. The ghostly mountain now stands forth, reposing in quiet majesty, the chieftain of these hills.

6. Following the broad sweep of the picture, the waters are seen to stretch away on the other hand until they mark a sharp horizon against the brightening skies. Beneath her bridal veil, the Bay of San Francisco seems to lie yet sleeping. At once, all the scene is flooded with a sudden glory; the curtains are thrown back; and, glittering, sparkling, flashing in the beams which bathe her beauties with celestial light, smiling half dreamily in the face of heaven's own god, the majestic

bay lies before us-awake; and at her side sitsSan Francisco!

7. There is a familiar picture of an American Indian, standing upon a headland washed by the Pacific Ocean, and shading his eyes with one hand as he gazes steadfastly upon the sinking sun. The picture needs amending; for already the Indian has disappeared from this Pacific shore, and the white man stands in his stead - his last westward conquest already achieved. From ocean to ocean, the continent is his own-in his hand its destiny for good or ill.

8. We may stand upon the summit of that hill which keeps watch over the young and wayward 4 city of San Francisco, and looking out over the waste of waters that circles half a world, see a dense bank of vapor- murky and dark below, but rolling its surface billows onward in the setting sunlight as a heaving sea of molten gold-move landward from the ocean. Standing out cold, and sharp, and bleak against the coming tide, rises Lone Mountain - the city of the dead.

9. There repose the bones of those who have gone before, and there will rest the dust, honored or dishonored, of the thousands now toiling in the city at our feet; fighting the battle whose reward is there. What is to be the story of that battle and these toilers? Is wealth alone their confessed, as well as secret idol? Is it to suffice to gild every vice, and condone every crime? Do they know no test of merit or excellence, save that of their own mountain's touchstone, which shows by the fraction of a tint the proportion of pure gold?

6

10. If these latter questions are to be answered to the disadvantage of this generation, what measure of derision and contempt will be poured out over its gravestones by the men who shall blush to own them ancestors? Is life worth living, if this is to be the reward? Is work worth working, if a gibe or a sneer at the dead man is to be the legend of his monument?

9

11. The fog has rolled up in mighty mass against Lone Mountain, towering in huge, fleecy billows above it, still black beneath, while its summit glows as if it might be the throne of a pagan god. The gravestones show as glistening specks against the dark lining of the cloud. An instant more, and the vast pile will topple over, rolling majestically down in solemn silence, wrapping hill and valley in a fleecy winding-sheet, swallowing up, as into the resistless current of oblivion,10 the City of the Dead, and all its monuments, whether of honor or of shame.

12. The San Franciscan of to-day may look out towards that resting-place which is to be his own may see the fleecy but impenetrable bank, as it overhangs and threatens to ingulf11 it. Let him ask himself if he has earned such place in the life of his city as may be for him a monument of honor when the head-stones of Lone Mountain lie buried in a forgotten past. If he has not, then may he here see the type of his own memorythe poor lesson of his life-swallowed into the tide of the Forgotten. And, even as we gaze, the vast bank topples over, and rolls down; and of